GLOBALLY OPTIMAL POINT CLOUD REGISTRATION FOR ROBUST MOBILE MAPPING

Abstract. Point cloud registration algorithms have been studied for several decades. In the SLAM domain, dense local convergence based methods are typically used to register consecutive scans. Since these procedures are not globally optimal, it happens that they converge to a wrong local minimum. This can lead to gross errors during mapping and can make entire datasets unusable. We introduce a new branch and bound based point cloud registration method that is globally optimal. The method is able to reliably determine the global optimum within a given parameter search space. We show how this method can be used in a mapping system as a fallback function to correct gross errors. Using various public datasets, we demonstrate the capabilities of the method.